Give God the glory

As I listened to a young man speak at the Father’s Day evening service at my church, it became very evident that he loves the Lord and believes that all things are possible with God.

He has an amazing story to share and my prayer is that everyone will be encouraged from it.

At the time that Rick and Mary Beth Lemen discovered that something was wrong with their 6-year-old son, they were living in Warsaw in northern Indiana.

In the beginning, their son would have blank stares as though he wasn’t aware of his surroundings. As these began happening more often, they took Matt for testing.

After many series of tests they found that he was having seizures. These seizures would last up to 20 seconds at a time. The medical profession began treating Matt with medications to find out what would work best for his situation.

Little by little adjustments the doctors added medications. Both Rick and Mary Beth worked jobs but numerous times throughout this story, one or both had to stay up all night with Matt due to the seizures and then go to work the next day.

Matt was small in his adolescent and teen age years compared to the other kids his age and due to his health condition had fallen behind on his learning grade level.

Mary Beth had great concern about sending him to middle school under those conditions so she and Rick searched other options.

They found a Christian school in Warsaw but it was not set up for special education situations and the school denied their registration.

The next day they received a call from the pastor who felt God wanted their son to attend the church’s Christian school. He went on to say that if one-on-one teaching would be needed, he could personally tutor Matt to get him up to his grade level.

Rick and Mary Beth were ecstatic that not only would they receive help for their son, but they found a church family that remains close to their hearts today.

Within a two-year period, Matt began excelling in his school work and had moved to the upper 10 percent of his class scholastically.

All the time that this was going on, Matt had appointments with his doctor to change medications to try to maintain the seizures.

Each time Matt would tell his doctor that God would heal him and the doctor sort of sloughed it off.

When Matt reached 15 years old, his doctor examined him and said something had happened in Matt’s condition.

Matt would no longer need medication.

Matt said “I told you God was going to heal me,” and the doctor replied, “Yes you did.”

One day soon after, the doctor called Matt to tell him that he had rededicated his life to Jesus.

Matt will soon be 30 years old and hasn’t had a seizure in more than 15 years.

He has been called to be an evangelist to tell all who will listen his amazing story of healing and deliverance.

We give God glory for what He has done for Matthew Lemen.

Eric Hopkins is an associate minister of Growing Branches for Christ Ministries and wrote this article as a member of the Fayette County Ministerial Association.